The Clinical Informatics Research and Development (CIRD) group’s mission is to improve the quality and efficiency of care for patients at Partners HealthCare System by assuring that the most advanced current knowledge about medical informatics (clinical computing) is incorporated into clinical information systems at Partners HealthCare.

Toward this end, CIRD personnel play key roles in crafting the Partners clinical systems strategy, in product management of select enterprise clinical systems, in leading the design of the informatics infrastructure underlying enterprise clinical systems, contribute to national and international standards development activities, and conduct research and development projects to inform the clinical systems strategy and direction.

CIRD activities aim to assure that the clinical systems developed and implemented at Partners are helping to advance the field of clinical computing, and thereby improve the quality of care, patient safety, and the efficiency of healthcare delivery.

Specific activities of CIRD include:

• Establish the vision for enterprise clinical systems at Partners and articulate the vision to the Partners community and beyond

• Lead the design of select enterprise clinical applications, products, and services in collaboration with Applications Development, Enterprise Services, and Clinical Systems Management

• Lead the coordination of priorities for enterprise clinical portfolio application development, in conjunction with Clinical Systems Management, and IS leadership

• Lead the enterprise knowledge management process in support of clinical decision support systems, and manage the development and implementation of online reference materials (Partners Handbook)

• Design key components of the informatics infrastructure: establish or adopt standard techniques for medical knowledge representation (e.g., medication decision support, rules and alerts, reminders, etc.), and health reference information models, controlled codes, and controlled medical terminology.

• Serve as an informatics and design resource to other divisions of IS with respect to clinical application usability, complex clinical systems, information modeling, clinical application architecture

• Scan the outside environment for advances in clinical informatics from both academic and commercial settings relevant to Partners research and development

• Conduct research & development activities, e.g. develop prototype applications to demonstrate advanced clinical computing techniques or concepts

• Conduct evaluation research based on the clinical applications developed at Partners

• Support the work of researchers at Partners whose work involves electronic clinical data

• Conduct educational programs (e.g., Weekly Informatics Seminars, lecture series, and Fellows in clinical computing) and participate in HMS and HSPH teaching activities

• Publish and lecture about clinical informatics activities to share our experiences and learning with others